Before he became the Greater of Cheese, William Castle was an all-purpose director of schlock B movies at Columbia — Serpent of the Nile, Slaves of Babylon and The Saracen Blade, anyone? Even when these movies show up on TV, no one pays much attention to them because they’re not horror, the genre in which Castle made his reputation for goofiness and gimmickry.

But the truth is that the pictures are not half bad for what they are: B-level, Saturday-matinee kiddie-fodder. Take, for example, The Law vs. Billy the Kid with Scott Brady as The Kid; that terrific character actor James Griffith as Pat Garrett; and The Skipper himself, Alan Hale, Jr. as the bullying Bob Olinger.

The script even sticks, with some slight degree of stickiness, to the outline of the Lincoln County War. Kid and Garrett are saddle pals — Kid goes off the rails to avenge the murder of his boss; Garrett is recruited to become Sheriff and track the Kid down. Kid busts out of jail; Kid is killed by Garrett at Pete Maxwell’s ranch near Roswell, N.M.

Brady, who was Lawrence Tierney’s kid brother, was too old at 31 to play the Kid, but Griffith is just right. The action moves along quickly, the romance isn’t too romancy, the drama of two buddies on opposite sides isn’t too dramatic, the Technicolor is sharp, and the pic lasts only 72 minutes.

You may not be able to put faces to the names of the two leads, but you’ll know them when you see them. Brady’s last role was Sheriff Frank in Gremlins. You know he was a B actor if Joe Dante gave him a cameo. —Doug Bentin